Amazon updates Kindle app, comic books now supported

Batman has landed on Kindle. 1,000 comics and children's books are now available on the Kindle App for iPad/iPhone, Android and the Amazon Cloud Player (Safari, Chrome, Firefox).

Batman has landed on Kindle. 1,000 comics and children’s books are now available on the Kindle App for iPad/iPhone, Android and the Amazon Cloud Player for Safari, Chrome, Firefox. (Frame: Batman: The Dark Knight Returns by Frank Miller)This should come as huge news for fans of comic books and graphic novels. Amazon has added support for the format for both the Apple iOS and Android apps, and its cloud reader. In addition the update — version 3.1, released today — also adds support for children’s books.

According to Amazon, there are approximately 1,000 children’s and comic book titles available for Kindle Fire, Kindle for Android, Kindle for iPad, and Kindle Cloud Reader (compatible with Chrome, Safari, and Firefox).

Fortunately we have evolved from the black and white only reader days, with today’s tablets providing full, high resolution color experiences that enable Amazon to render this content in the most pleasing fashion possible. Artwork, for instance, will appear in a “panel-by-panel experience that reads as the author intended.”

In keeping with its pricing model for newspapers, paperbacks and magazines, Kindle editions generally appear to be the value plays. The Kindle edition of Frank Miller’s Batman: The Dark Knight Returns goes for $9.99 versus $11.05 for the paperback edition. Curious George Visits the Zoo is $3.00 versus $3.95 for Kindle and paperback respectively.